


Speaking Freely

by fineandwittie



Category: The Last Kingdom (TV)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, I can't tell what's shippy and what's gen with these two, M/M, S2E6, season 2 episode 6, so i just tag it to be safe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:13:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29974422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fineandwittie/pseuds/fineandwittie
Summary: After getting yelled at for no reason, instead of letting Alfred send him away, Uhtred requests a private audience and they clear the air a bit.
Relationships: Alfred the Great & Uhtred of Bebbanburg, Alfred the Great/Uhtred of Bebbanburg
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	Speaking Freely

**Author's Note:**

> same old, same old: unebta'd and unproofread

“And it is of increasing concern.” Alfred settled back on his throne, visibly calmer than he had been moments ago.

Uhtred exhaled, anger mixing in noxious combination with hurt in his gut. A small voice in his mind, that sounded remarkably like Father Beocca, told him to calm, to think rationally before reacting.

There was a moment of silence, everyone held in stasis, before Alfred opened his mouth to speak. Uhtred beat him to it, unable to let the moment pass, to let this poison ferment between them. His voice, when he spoke, was even and empty. “May I speak with you privately, Lord?”

Alfred’s eyes snapped to him and he shut his mouth. Uhtred’s skin prickled under that dark gaze, feeling flayed. For an eternity, Alfred examined him and Uhtred held his eyes, unwilling to back down or flinch.

“Very well. The rest of you, leave us. Steapa, please remain at the door.” 

For a beat, no one moved. Uhtred wondered idly if Aethelred or his man would cause some kind of scene, but in the end, they acquiesced. When everyone else was gone, Uhtred felt his shoulders relax the barest fraction. Alfred had not stopped examining him.

“What must be said in private that cannot be said before my son-in-law?”

Uhtred’s jaw clenched, but he forced himself to release the tension. “Permission to speak freely?”

Alfred’s eyebrows nearly disappeared into his hair. “Are you suggesting that you have not always spoken freely to me in the past?”

“Yes, Lord.” Uhtred’s teeth were gritted, but he managed to force the words out. 

“Than I am fascinated to hear what fresh insolence this will produce. Permission granted.”

“Lord, you claim that you do not know me…” Uhtred stopped, trying to order his thoughts into something coherent. “You have known exactly who I am since the moment you met me. I am who I am and I never pretended to be otherwise. I do not understand why you cannot accept that, why you constantly question my loyalty and my service to you. I have never been an oathbreaker. I have never lied to you.” Uhtred stopped, took a breath. “What have I ever done to warrant such distrust?”

Alfred’s eyes had narrowed and his shoulders had tensed, but otherwise, he did not move. Simply sat upon his throne and watched Uhtred with cold, dark eyes.

Uhtred swallowed passed a suddenly constricted throat. “I have given you so much of myself. I gave you my sword, my life, my _son_ and you repay me for that with mistrust and disdain. That hardly seems Christian, Lord.”

Alfred’s face clouded over with confusion. “Your son?”

Uhtred turned away from Alfred, face to the wall, but eyes unseeing. “When Edward fall ill, Iseult’s magic took another life in exchange for his. Her spell took my child as payment for yours.” 

Alfred inhaled sharply enough that Uhtred could hear him. 

Uhtred had thought himself well passed the grief of this, but speaking of it had brought it up fresh and he struggled not to let it overwhelm him. When he finally got himself under control and turned back, Alfred was staring at him with wide, wounded eyes. The coldness had fled, the years of mistrust that had passed since then gone in an instant. He was, once again, the man he had been in the swamps. Softer, more open, more accepting of difference.

“Why did you never say? Why did you allow me to go on, thinking that there had been no price? That she had saved my son without consequence?” Alfred’s voice was quiet, barely above a whisper. “Why did you keep this from me?”

Uhtred struggled to meet his eyes for a long moment, jaw clenched, before simply closing his own. “It was not your burden to bear, Lord. I knew there was a price. I knew an innocent would die, but Edward is your heir. Edward is the future of the dream that you are building. That is more important than a single life. Did I know the child that the spell would take would be mine?” Uhtred opened his eyes and met Alfred’s gaze again. “No, but I was not surprised by it either. That is the way of magic, Lord. It takes what is most precious from the one who requests its casting.”

Alfred stood, more quickly than Uhtred had ever seen him. “But you were not the one who requested that spell be cast, Uhtred. You should not be made to pay for my sins.”

Uhtred laughed, a bitter, hollow sound. “But is that not what I am here for, Lord?” He tilted his head, challenge in his eyes. “I am a pagan. It makes me an easy target, does it not, Lord? Something is wrong, someone has failed to do what needed to be done, someone has lied? It must be Uhtred. Because he is a pagan and his very presence at court corrupts. Lord, you have been making me pay for your sins since I arrived here. I was imprisoned and hung up in the square because I gave you sound information. I was left to rot in the dungeons when you returned because I am a Dane. Odda the Traitor stole my kill at Cynuit and yet it was somehow my fault. You made me crawl on my knees through the filth in the street in penance for a wrong that had been done to me. For Odda’s lies. I killed the man, the abbot, who faked a prophesy and told King Guthred to _sell me to a slaver_ and you trapped me in an oath that I never wanted to give.”

Uhtred was breathing hard. He had paced his way the bottom of the dais. He stood, chest heavy, and stared up at Alfred. He knew that his eyes had gone a little wild. Felt as though he were in the hall at Eoferwic again, leaning over Guthred and fighting desperately not to kill him or cry.

“You are a king and so have never experienced what I have experienced. I am glad of it for there is nothing on this earth so crushing as the life of a slave on one of those ships. For months, I tried to keep a hold on myself, on who I was and had been. Halig called me Lord, even after the Master caught him at it. But from the moment Guthred locked me in a cage, I was nothing but Osbert. I was no longer myself. I was no longer human. Simply a dog, who fought over scraps of food and longed for death. I have scars on my back from the lash. When my brother found me on that beach, I was too weak to lift a sword. I was too far gone to want to lift a sword. There was so little of who I am left in me, so little of Uhtred of Bebbenburg, that my life had seemed a dream. I spent _months_ on that ship. I rowed through fall and winter in the snow and storms. I was broken by it. And then you sent Ragnar to save me from it, but you were too late to save my sanity. I was half-mad from it, unmade and left with nothing to rebuilt myself. And we rode north to Gisela, one of the only bright spots left in my memory, who was neither dead nor left behind to despise me. I walked into that church to find the poisonous snake who had whispered lies into Guthred’s gullible ear attempting to marry her to my uncle who wants me dead. My uncle who was not even there. That abbot was not a man of God, no matter what oaths he took or promises he made, and he would not _stop talking_. But when I finally returned here. Returned home, to familiar places and familiar faces, and began to regain myself a little, I walked into your library, Lord, and you looked me in the face and you smiled and you put me back on that boat.”

Alfred’s breathing was ragged and his eyes appeared glossy with tears. He stared at Uhtred as though nothing else in the world existed. Uhtred himself was in the Nortse, pulling and feeling the lash on his back and hearing Halig’s cries and moans from the prow of the boat. He felt mad with it, reeling and out of control. He needed to lay down, to shut his eyes and keep the world at bay. He needed to feel flesh against his flesh and remember that that had been years ago and he was not trapped in that place anymore.

He swayed on his feet. “I have given you more than any man has a right to ask and it is never enough. I am never enough. Why not simply kill me and have done with it? I am so tired. So tired of dancing the oars for you, of wondering which step will be the one that sends me to my death, of wondering what fresh torture you will dream up to humiliate me, to shame my family, to take your pleasure from. My brother once asked me how I could serve a man who did not see my worth. I find myself asking the same question. With every encounter, with every conservation, I despise you a little bit more. And yet, I am sworn. And no matter what you think of me, no matter that to you I am little more than the dirt beneath your feet, I am no oathbreaker. I will not be forsworn, even though my swearing was not freely done.”

Alfred had barely moved, since Uhtred began, thought tears were now flowing freely down his face. His face was hollowed out and filled with some desperate, wounded thing that Uhtred did not understand. 

Uhtred tried to get his breathing under control, to slow his racing heart, to calm himself enough to manage wherever the rest of this conversation would go. There was a long silence, where minutes blurred into each other and Uhtred slowly succeeded. Alfred simply stood before him on the dais and wept.

Finally, with a rasping swallow that was loud enough for Uhtred to hear, Alfred said, “Uhtred Ragnarson, I free you from your oath of service to me. You may choose your path for yourself and I will never ask another oath of you as long as I live. I will swear to this on the Holy Book, if necessary. It seems I have done you a great wrong. One that I believed necessary, on that has, I do not doubt, been of great benefit to England, but a wrong nonetheless.” Alfred inhaled deeply, his body shuddering. Uhtred watched him, eyes wide in shock, not quite able to believe. “That does not alter the fact that I wish you to remain in my service, though I have little hope of it.”

Uhtred stared at him, not quite able to process what he’d said. “I…” But he was speechless, his mind entirely blank, but for a slowly building relief that mixed with a surging joy. 

Alfred nodded, looking stoic and resigned. “Of course. Well.” He blinked, once, twice, and sucked in a pained breath. “Why would you choose to serve a man that you despise?” He shook his head, clearly attempting a smile. “I wish you godspeed wherever your path takes you, then, and I will pray that someday it will lead back to your home.”

It sounded like goodbye. It _was_ goodbye and Uhtred could not do it. He had been bound to this man for too long to simply walk away. He also prayed, to Odin and to Freya, that his thread would eventually spin him back to Bebbenburg, but he could not go yet. Not while there was so much need for him in Wessex. 

“Lord, I never said I would not choose to serve.”

Alfred, who had turned away from him, froze. For one breath, then two, he did not move. Uhtred watched the tense line of his shoulders shift with each breath. Finally, Alfred turned back. His face was a void, his eyes flat once again, but for the first time, Uhtred could see that it was a mask. A lie that Alfred was telling with his face. His body did not lie though. Uhtred caught a glimpse of his fisted hands as he tucked them behind his back. He saw the King’s tense, not only across his shoulders, but down both arms and in the rigidity of his posture.

Alfred was trying to fight whatever he was feeling, but for once he seemed to be failing. 

Uhtred tilted his head. “Thank you, Lord, for my freedom. It has been what I wished most, even above reclaiming my home, since I was taken by the Danes. I have spent nearly a decade of my life as a slave, in one way or another.” Alfred flinched at this, but then frowned a little, clearly realizing that Uhtred was no including his time as Alfred’s oathman in that assessment. “With the chance to give it freely, I would give you my service, though not my oath. I pledge my sword to you years ago, Lord, and that has not changed. And you forget. I am a member of the Wessex Witan now, since you gave me Coccham. Bebbenburg will wait.”

Alfred was still for a moment, barely breathing. He simply stared down at Uhtred with hard eyes, as though he were trying to see into Uhtred’s soul. “You said that you despise me more each time we speak to one another and yet you would freely give me your service. Why?”

Uhtred tried not to roll his eyes, but he was pretty sure he failed. “Every time we speak, Lord, you accuse me of lying to you. You lie to me in turn. You attempt to humiliate me, though less now than before. I am weary of it. But…I have grown to love Coccham. I may look like a Dane. I may speak and pray like a Dane, but it has been many years since I was one. And so I will do my best to protect my home. Just because I do not pray to your God, does not mean I will not fight for him.”

Alfred’s lips parted on an exhale that sounded almost shocked and almost relieved, but not quite either. His eyes had brightened.

“But, Lord…I will not…I cannot serve a man who does not trust me. I have no lied to you and I will not lie to you. You say you want me in your service. You will have it, but only if you trust me with it.”

Alfred nodded, an awkward little bob of his head. “I will try. It is, by now long habit, but I promise you that I will try.”

Uhtred lifted his shoulders with a small smile curling at his mouth. “That is all I ask, Lord.”

For a moment, they stood looking at each other, peaceful in their newly found truce. Eventually, Uhtred grinned. “And in the spirit of honestly, Lord, I would like to say, since we are alone and I have been given permission to speak freely, that your son-in-law is a lying piece of weasel shit. He reminds me very much of the Young Odda, but pretty.”

Alfred chewed his lip, clearly suppressing a smile, and inclined his head a little. “And yet, it is not he who is dangerous.”

Uhtred conceded the point with a tilt of his head. “No. Aldhelm, who whispers treason when he thinks others can’t hear, is much more dangerous there. But in the interest of full disclosure, I think perhaps your nephew also grows more dangerous, for he lies like he breaths and has become good at whispering too.” He paused a moment, before adding, “It was he who first called me King of Mercia.”

Alfred nodded at that. “I will keep a closer eye on him. His behavior has been concerningly normal of late. Which usually means he is scheming.”

“Lord, Aethelwold is always scheming.”

“True, but whenever he is acting aggressively normal, it means that the schemes have taken root somehow.” Alfred sighed, quietly. “No matter. I will have him monitored. I appreciate the warning.”

“Always, Lord.” Uhtred said, sincere, and Alfred believed him.

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is a little ranty, but I really just wanted to give Uhtred the opportunity to yell at Alfred a bit about all the shit that Alfred's put him through. So.


End file.
